#12 [Big Bang, Exo, G-Dragon/Tao]
Fandom: Big Bang/EXO
Title: Shadow of the giant
Rating: R
Pairing(s)/Focus: G-Dragon/Tao
Length: 2,250 words
Summary: Zitao becomes a YG trainee.
Warnings: N/A
Notes: N/A
Remixee author: gdgdbaby
Title of work you remixed: rapping practice turned blowjobs
Link to work you remixed: http://ask.fm/hikarusulu/answer/36104478088
“You’re a gamble,” they tell Zitao, bluntly, when he’s first offered the contract. YG has no infrastructure for Chinese trainees, isn’t particularly concerned with developing any: not an inch of slack if he doesn’t understand what the dance instructor barks at him, or shows up late because he’s unfamiliar with the bus route or Seoul at rush hour. There are no second chances. “You decide the outcome.”
His days drag themselves through a cycle, rinse wash repeat: he doesn’t learn the words morning, afternoon, evening, knows them by the names vocal practise, dance practise, Korean lessons. His tongue tangles itself around the complexities of Korean grammar, struggling to read deceptively simple characters and to sing the notes being played at him on a keyboard, throat opening up to release an awkward fledgling of sound. “Do you deserve to be here?” his vocal coach says, and Zitao, prepared for harsh words, tries not to flinch, nods mutely. “Then sing like it.”
The language barrier is relatively easier to ignore at dance practise, years of martial arts and yoga lending itself to fluidity and grace; his body knows itself, its exact weight and give, quick to break down choreography without instruction, assimilate each routine to muscle memory.
His Korean is accented at best, at times unintelligible. It’s less noticeable when he sings, easier to mimic the sounds, words that are put and not produced in his mouth. He borrows CDs from his Korean teacher and falls asleep every night to the repetition, hello, my name is, nice to meet you.
Back in Qingdao, he’d drafted the application in secret, holed up in his bedroom with the door locked as he filled out his name, date of birth, nationality; recorded a tape of him performing a wushu routine in the empty gym of his high school after hours, shoes loud as they scraped across the shining finish; set his camera on top of books stacked on a chair in a makeshift tripod, sorted through the blurry shots of his attempt to set up the auto-timer, the pictures of himself blinking and unprepared, for one that highlights his jawline and his eyes.
He thinks about his mother’s wet eyes, asking, “Is this what you really want?” as he flipped over his paperwork for Beijing Dance Academy to makes notes on visa procedures, flights to Incheon. Separated only by the Yellow Sea, Seoul was the furthest thing from Qingdao, and Zitao, sitting by the Han River past midnight, could only think of bigger bodies of water, the moon pulling the tide home in its yearning.
The hardest part he tries not to think about, as winding down after an hour of practise, the other trainees gather on the other side of the room, backs turned as they speak in rapid-fire Korean. The YG trainee rumour mill is a solid fifty-fifty: fifty percent gossip, fifty percent bullshit. From snatches of overheard conversation, he pieces together the latest news: G-Dragon is featuring a trainee on his next solo album. Maybe the girl with the sweet, clarion voice who had won a street singing competition recently, Zitao thinks, or the seventeen-year-old rap prodigy. He stretches out his leg, calf muscle twinging, and practises counting in time with the clock, hana, dul, set, net, until the dance instructor returns.
He’s staying late for the third day in a row, running through the latest choreography; he keeps missing the instep on the sixty-fourth beat, more than a few moves not as sharp as they could be. Alone, he’s stripped down to his inner shirt, sweat soaking through the cotton so that it clings to his back, hair matted under a snapback. The lights are dimmed, but the music is still loud, echoing through the room on a loop, consuming his focus; he mouths along to the chorus, punctuating each word with the snap of his leg or the swing of his arm.
He’s nearly through the coda when a sharp blade of light reflected in a corner of the mirror catches his eye, light spilling in from the open door, interrupted by a silhouette. It’s the audience that startles him, makes him stumble over the last of the choreography, until he’s standing dumbly while the song starts over, still staring at the familiar profile: mussed hair and a sharp chin, leaning in the doorway with a self-possession that made it graceful, natural, as if he belonged there.
Zitao half-expects to be spoken to, but he just leaves, letting the door close behind him. But for a moment, the light shines onto his withdrawing face, and Zitao recognises Jiyong.
The first time he saw Jiyong in person, it was in a packed arena, G-Dragon commanding the stage like it was his birthright, microphone solid in his grip. The second time, Zitao was lost in the YG building, and the elevator doors had slid open to the sight of Jiyong talking to someone that Zitao had only recognised as Sean long after the doors had shut again.
The latest encounter seems too surreal to count, too much like the fleeting fantasies he’d had back in Qingdao, of meeting Jiyong, the same half-shuttered expression he’d conjured up for Jiyong when he’d laid in bed, stripped, and licked his palm. He gathers his things in a daze, pulling on his spare shirt and trudging to the bus stop, and by the time he’s home, he’s sure he imagined it: a combination of fatigue and stress and wishful thinking.
By the third month in YG he’d learnt the magic trick: get good enough. A dream was common, immaterial: it didn’t matter if it was something genuine, I want to sing, or wanting to meet the subject of every sexual fantasy he’d had at - or since - seventeen. He said “thank you” to every criticism, eyes stinging but dry, tried twice as hard as he let on, and when he crawled into bed at night, he was too tired to hold a thought, let alone move, to do anything but sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.
He’s convinced until he arrives at vocal practise a few days later to find Jiyong there, waiting for him. He’s not entirely sure that Jiyong could possibly miss the look on his face, biting his lip to try and school his expression into something that isn’t wonderstruck and completely uncomprehending, but Jiyong, having waved him into a chair, just delivers his pitch, looking only faintly amused when he says afterward, “Got all that?”
Zitao’s throat is dry. “Yes,” he manages, unconvincingly, and then he remembers the rumour, Jiyong’s words finally stringing themselves together into something that makes sense. Before he can stop himself, he blurts: “Me?”
Jiyong laughs. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, like Zitao’s bewilderment is assuring, somehow, but the affirmation makes him sit up straight. “You in?”
It isn’t really a question. Jiyong twists the ring on his thumb, waits for the only answer Zitao could give. It doesn’t take Zitao more than a second to nod, firm, and Jiyong says, “Great.” He pulls the door open, pausing in the doorway to look at Zitao again, who, unsure of the proper reaction to make, hastily bows. When he hazards a glance, Jiyong’s mouth is curved into a faint smile. “Looking forward to it, Zitao,” he says, and then he’s gone.
His sessions with Jiyong start a few days later, Jiyong sweeping into the studio with sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow, sometimes late, sometimes bringing with him the acrid smell of cigarettes, and still the Jiyong of his idolatry and imagination pales. In his dreams, Jiyong is always painted in fluorescents, bold colours. Black for the roots growing out of his once-blond hair, white for the flash of straight teeth when he smiles, dressed in reds and golds like a symbol. But it’s nothing like the real Jiyong, who laughingly corrects Zitao when he mispronounces a word, and who fumbles with the only Mandarin he knows, accent atrocious - “I love you, thank you, we are Big Bang” - for the way Zitao lights up in recognition, this Jiyong, infinitely vibrant and alive.
Zitao’s parts are divided into several singing parts and a rap. All of it is unfamiliar territory, the small recording booth and a map of sound waves reflected on every display, but Jiyong starts him off easy, sheet music and a capella, humming the melody for Zitao to follow.
The singing parts are fairly simple, easily within Zitao’s range, and once he understands what Jiyong wants, it takes fewer and fewer takes, playing up on the slight huskiness of his voice in its lower register. He leaves the booth to watch Jiyong layer the tracks together on the chorus, playing it out loud in short, one-line fragments. He forgets about the rap until Jiyong plays the next segment of the track, Jiyong’s vocals already attached, saying, “The rap’s something like this.”
“I can’t even read that fast,” Zitao pouts, slumping in his seat. Jiyong laughs, lets Zitao butt his shoulder and then stay there. His hand reaches up between them to ruffle Zitao’s hair.
Zitao can feel Jiyong breathing, warm over the top of his head. His hand is still in Zitao’s hair. “We’ll work on it, kid,” Jiyong says.
Jiyong’s version of “working on it” is running him through drill after drill, surveying him while tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, snapback pulled down low. He watches Jiyong over the edge of the lyric sheets, the clench of his hands that preclude a lurch every time he tips too far back. The curl of his mouth, love me hate me supercilious or something much more simple, content, depending on where he was and who he was supposed to be. It makes it better.
He spends an entire day on pronunciation, reading the lyrics without any cadence, another on enunciation, then flow. “Again, clearer,” Jiyong says, for the third time, and Zitao fits the pen back in his mouth, recaptures his rhythm, and starts rapping again.
His jaw aches by the time Jiyong lets up, saying, “Here, give me your phone.” He finds the camera application, switches it to video and focusing it on his face. “This is your homework,” he says, absently, before he’s rapping, the same few lines Zitao had stumbled over for the better part of an hour unrecognisable in their fluency, the easy, effortless way it tumbles out of Jiyong’s mouth.
Jiyong holds out Zitao’s phone when he’s done, but when Zitao holds out his hand, Jiyong doesn’t let go. “This is just so you have an idea of what it should sound like,” Jiyong says. “If I wanted it to sound like me, I’d do it myself. It has to be you.” Zitao nods, swallowing, and this time, when he reaches for his phone, Jiyong lets him have it.
The lighting in the video is off, Jiyong’s face perpetually blurred by pixels, but the audio is mostly clear. He watches it twice. In the middle of the third replay, he rolls over onto his stomach, so that when he gets a hand down his pants, he’s boxed in by heat, hair sticking to his face, pushing into his grip with Jiyong’s voice talking him through it. He sweats it out like a fever, trembling, face pressed into his pillow so that when he comes, he chokes down on the sound.
“Just try it,” Jiyong’s saying, pushing Zitao into the recording booth, when Zitao turns around and pulls him in after him. Jiyong stumbles a bit, but when Zitao catches a glance of his expression, Jiyong’s not quite surprised, a hint of something that is suddenly familiar, decipherable, and Zitao feels a flash of - triumph, maybe, sure enough to lean down and press their mouths together.
He loses track of everything else until Jiyong pulls back, putting up a hand to stop him when he automatically follows. It’s not a no. “You’re recording it today,” Jiyong says, carding his fingers through Zitao’s hair, at once tender and immutable, and Zitao nods, distracted enough to agree.
“Okay.” He lets go of Jiyong’s wrist, reeling him in by the waist instead. This close, he can smell Jiyong’s cologne, skin-warmed and tantalising. He finds Jiyong’s mouth again, mumbles against it, “Later.”
Later, they both know, his voice will be too raspy, hoarse. For now, Jiyong’s mouth is soft and yielding, leaning into the hands Zitao has poised over his belt like a question. Jiyong’s breath is hot, fanning across his cheek when he pulls away, pushing Jiyong into the chair.
“Later,” Jiyong repeats, and twists his fingers into one of Zitao’s belt loops. Pulls, hard, and Zitao, jerked to his knees, leans forward and loses track of the conversation.
-
“I need one of those,” Seunghyun says, lifting an eyebrow, and Zitao, startled, lifts his head. Jiyong’s fingers slide out of his hair with the movement. Seunghyun’s standing in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. Jiyong brushes his fingers against the small of Zitao’s back before he turns, leaning back in his chair like a lazy house cat.
Zitao settles back down complacently, the papers under his arm crinkling as he props his chin back on his arm. The conversation eludes him, but even he can hear the smirk in Jiyong’s voice when he says, “This one’s mine.”
Title: Shadow of the giant
Rating: R
Pairing(s)/Focus: G-Dragon/Tao
Length: 2,250 words
Summary: Zitao becomes a YG trainee.
Warnings: N/A
Notes: N/A
Remixee author: gdgdbaby
Title of work you remixed: rapping practice turned blowjobs
Link to work you remixed: http://ask.fm/hikarusulu/answer/36104478088
“You’re a gamble,” they tell Zitao, bluntly, when he’s first offered the contract. YG has no infrastructure for Chinese trainees, isn’t particularly concerned with developing any: not an inch of slack if he doesn’t understand what the dance instructor barks at him, or shows up late because he’s unfamiliar with the bus route or Seoul at rush hour. There are no second chances. “You decide the outcome.”
His days drag themselves through a cycle, rinse wash repeat: he doesn’t learn the words morning, afternoon, evening, knows them by the names vocal practise, dance practise, Korean lessons. His tongue tangles itself around the complexities of Korean grammar, struggling to read deceptively simple characters and to sing the notes being played at him on a keyboard, throat opening up to release an awkward fledgling of sound. “Do you deserve to be here?” his vocal coach says, and Zitao, prepared for harsh words, tries not to flinch, nods mutely. “Then sing like it.”
The language barrier is relatively easier to ignore at dance practise, years of martial arts and yoga lending itself to fluidity and grace; his body knows itself, its exact weight and give, quick to break down choreography without instruction, assimilate each routine to muscle memory.
His Korean is accented at best, at times unintelligible. It’s less noticeable when he sings, easier to mimic the sounds, words that are put and not produced in his mouth. He borrows CDs from his Korean teacher and falls asleep every night to the repetition, hello, my name is, nice to meet you.
Back in Qingdao, he’d drafted the application in secret, holed up in his bedroom with the door locked as he filled out his name, date of birth, nationality; recorded a tape of him performing a wushu routine in the empty gym of his high school after hours, shoes loud as they scraped across the shining finish; set his camera on top of books stacked on a chair in a makeshift tripod, sorted through the blurry shots of his attempt to set up the auto-timer, the pictures of himself blinking and unprepared, for one that highlights his jawline and his eyes.
He thinks about his mother’s wet eyes, asking, “Is this what you really want?” as he flipped over his paperwork for Beijing Dance Academy to makes notes on visa procedures, flights to Incheon. Separated only by the Yellow Sea, Seoul was the furthest thing from Qingdao, and Zitao, sitting by the Han River past midnight, could only think of bigger bodies of water, the moon pulling the tide home in its yearning.
The hardest part he tries not to think about, as winding down after an hour of practise, the other trainees gather on the other side of the room, backs turned as they speak in rapid-fire Korean. The YG trainee rumour mill is a solid fifty-fifty: fifty percent gossip, fifty percent bullshit. From snatches of overheard conversation, he pieces together the latest news: G-Dragon is featuring a trainee on his next solo album. Maybe the girl with the sweet, clarion voice who had won a street singing competition recently, Zitao thinks, or the seventeen-year-old rap prodigy. He stretches out his leg, calf muscle twinging, and practises counting in time with the clock, hana, dul, set, net, until the dance instructor returns.
He’s staying late for the third day in a row, running through the latest choreography; he keeps missing the instep on the sixty-fourth beat, more than a few moves not as sharp as they could be. Alone, he’s stripped down to his inner shirt, sweat soaking through the cotton so that it clings to his back, hair matted under a snapback. The lights are dimmed, but the music is still loud, echoing through the room on a loop, consuming his focus; he mouths along to the chorus, punctuating each word with the snap of his leg or the swing of his arm.
He’s nearly through the coda when a sharp blade of light reflected in a corner of the mirror catches his eye, light spilling in from the open door, interrupted by a silhouette. It’s the audience that startles him, makes him stumble over the last of the choreography, until he’s standing dumbly while the song starts over, still staring at the familiar profile: mussed hair and a sharp chin, leaning in the doorway with a self-possession that made it graceful, natural, as if he belonged there.
Zitao half-expects to be spoken to, but he just leaves, letting the door close behind him. But for a moment, the light shines onto his withdrawing face, and Zitao recognises Jiyong.
The first time he saw Jiyong in person, it was in a packed arena, G-Dragon commanding the stage like it was his birthright, microphone solid in his grip. The second time, Zitao was lost in the YG building, and the elevator doors had slid open to the sight of Jiyong talking to someone that Zitao had only recognised as Sean long after the doors had shut again.
The latest encounter seems too surreal to count, too much like the fleeting fantasies he’d had back in Qingdao, of meeting Jiyong, the same half-shuttered expression he’d conjured up for Jiyong when he’d laid in bed, stripped, and licked his palm. He gathers his things in a daze, pulling on his spare shirt and trudging to the bus stop, and by the time he’s home, he’s sure he imagined it: a combination of fatigue and stress and wishful thinking.
By the third month in YG he’d learnt the magic trick: get good enough. A dream was common, immaterial: it didn’t matter if it was something genuine, I want to sing, or wanting to meet the subject of every sexual fantasy he’d had at - or since - seventeen. He said “thank you” to every criticism, eyes stinging but dry, tried twice as hard as he let on, and when he crawled into bed at night, he was too tired to hold a thought, let alone move, to do anything but sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.
He’s convinced until he arrives at vocal practise a few days later to find Jiyong there, waiting for him. He’s not entirely sure that Jiyong could possibly miss the look on his face, biting his lip to try and school his expression into something that isn’t wonderstruck and completely uncomprehending, but Jiyong, having waved him into a chair, just delivers his pitch, looking only faintly amused when he says afterward, “Got all that?”
Zitao’s throat is dry. “Yes,” he manages, unconvincingly, and then he remembers the rumour, Jiyong’s words finally stringing themselves together into something that makes sense. Before he can stop himself, he blurts: “Me?”
Jiyong laughs. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, like Zitao’s bewilderment is assuring, somehow, but the affirmation makes him sit up straight. “You in?”
It isn’t really a question. Jiyong twists the ring on his thumb, waits for the only answer Zitao could give. It doesn’t take Zitao more than a second to nod, firm, and Jiyong says, “Great.” He pulls the door open, pausing in the doorway to look at Zitao again, who, unsure of the proper reaction to make, hastily bows. When he hazards a glance, Jiyong’s mouth is curved into a faint smile. “Looking forward to it, Zitao,” he says, and then he’s gone.
His sessions with Jiyong start a few days later, Jiyong sweeping into the studio with sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow, sometimes late, sometimes bringing with him the acrid smell of cigarettes, and still the Jiyong of his idolatry and imagination pales. In his dreams, Jiyong is always painted in fluorescents, bold colours. Black for the roots growing out of his once-blond hair, white for the flash of straight teeth when he smiles, dressed in reds and golds like a symbol. But it’s nothing like the real Jiyong, who laughingly corrects Zitao when he mispronounces a word, and who fumbles with the only Mandarin he knows, accent atrocious - “I love you, thank you, we are Big Bang” - for the way Zitao lights up in recognition, this Jiyong, infinitely vibrant and alive.
Zitao’s parts are divided into several singing parts and a rap. All of it is unfamiliar territory, the small recording booth and a map of sound waves reflected on every display, but Jiyong starts him off easy, sheet music and a capella, humming the melody for Zitao to follow.
The singing parts are fairly simple, easily within Zitao’s range, and once he understands what Jiyong wants, it takes fewer and fewer takes, playing up on the slight huskiness of his voice in its lower register. He leaves the booth to watch Jiyong layer the tracks together on the chorus, playing it out loud in short, one-line fragments. He forgets about the rap until Jiyong plays the next segment of the track, Jiyong’s vocals already attached, saying, “The rap’s something like this.”
“I can’t even read that fast,” Zitao pouts, slumping in his seat. Jiyong laughs, lets Zitao butt his shoulder and then stay there. His hand reaches up between them to ruffle Zitao’s hair.
Zitao can feel Jiyong breathing, warm over the top of his head. His hand is still in Zitao’s hair. “We’ll work on it, kid,” Jiyong says.
Jiyong’s version of “working on it” is running him through drill after drill, surveying him while tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, snapback pulled down low. He watches Jiyong over the edge of the lyric sheets, the clench of his hands that preclude a lurch every time he tips too far back. The curl of his mouth, love me hate me supercilious or something much more simple, content, depending on where he was and who he was supposed to be. It makes it better.
He spends an entire day on pronunciation, reading the lyrics without any cadence, another on enunciation, then flow. “Again, clearer,” Jiyong says, for the third time, and Zitao fits the pen back in his mouth, recaptures his rhythm, and starts rapping again.
His jaw aches by the time Jiyong lets up, saying, “Here, give me your phone.” He finds the camera application, switches it to video and focusing it on his face. “This is your homework,” he says, absently, before he’s rapping, the same few lines Zitao had stumbled over for the better part of an hour unrecognisable in their fluency, the easy, effortless way it tumbles out of Jiyong’s mouth.
Jiyong holds out Zitao’s phone when he’s done, but when Zitao holds out his hand, Jiyong doesn’t let go. “This is just so you have an idea of what it should sound like,” Jiyong says. “If I wanted it to sound like me, I’d do it myself. It has to be you.” Zitao nods, swallowing, and this time, when he reaches for his phone, Jiyong lets him have it.
The lighting in the video is off, Jiyong’s face perpetually blurred by pixels, but the audio is mostly clear. He watches it twice. In the middle of the third replay, he rolls over onto his stomach, so that when he gets a hand down his pants, he’s boxed in by heat, hair sticking to his face, pushing into his grip with Jiyong’s voice talking him through it. He sweats it out like a fever, trembling, face pressed into his pillow so that when he comes, he chokes down on the sound.
“Just try it,” Jiyong’s saying, pushing Zitao into the recording booth, when Zitao turns around and pulls him in after him. Jiyong stumbles a bit, but when Zitao catches a glance of his expression, Jiyong’s not quite surprised, a hint of something that is suddenly familiar, decipherable, and Zitao feels a flash of - triumph, maybe, sure enough to lean down and press their mouths together.
He loses track of everything else until Jiyong pulls back, putting up a hand to stop him when he automatically follows. It’s not a no. “You’re recording it today,” Jiyong says, carding his fingers through Zitao’s hair, at once tender and immutable, and Zitao nods, distracted enough to agree.
“Okay.” He lets go of Jiyong’s wrist, reeling him in by the waist instead. This close, he can smell Jiyong’s cologne, skin-warmed and tantalising. He finds Jiyong’s mouth again, mumbles against it, “Later.”
Later, they both know, his voice will be too raspy, hoarse. For now, Jiyong’s mouth is soft and yielding, leaning into the hands Zitao has poised over his belt like a question. Jiyong’s breath is hot, fanning across his cheek when he pulls away, pushing Jiyong into the chair.
“Later,” Jiyong repeats, and twists his fingers into one of Zitao’s belt loops. Pulls, hard, and Zitao, jerked to his knees, leans forward and loses track of the conversation.
-
“I need one of those,” Seunghyun says, lifting an eyebrow, and Zitao, startled, lifts his head. Jiyong’s fingers slide out of his hair with the movement. Seunghyun’s standing in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. Jiyong brushes his fingers against the small of Zitao’s back before he turns, leaning back in his chair like a lazy house cat.
Zitao settles back down complacently, the papers under his arm crinkling as he props his chin back on his arm. The conversation eludes him, but even he can hear the smirk in Jiyong’s voice when he says, “This one’s mine.”